BOOKS.
WE are indebted to the late Prcfessor Green for the proposal to make Lotze's System of Philosophy accessible to English readers. Part of the translation had been executed by him, and he had "intended to take upon himself the task of revising and executing the whole." Most people who read the works of Lotze will agree with the late Professor Green in his opinion that "the time spent on such a book as that would not be wasted as regards one's own work." The remark is true, whatever be the line of special work in which we may be engaged. No man of letters, no specialist in science, no philosopher, no theo- logian, but will derive incalculable benefit from the thorough study of Lotze's system of philosophy. To come into close con- tact with a mind so keen, calm, and comprehensive; to learn from him what are the essential conditions of human thinking ; to survey the boundaries of actual knowledge ; and to learn in what directions lie the most hopeful paths of progress for know- ledge and for life, must be a useful discipline for anyone. For many reasons we are glad to have Lotze's work in an English form. We think, also, that the translation itself and the form in which it is given to the public reflect credit on all concerned. The translation is a worthy rendering of a great work, and the editorial supervision seems to have been very thorough.
Our first notice will be limited to the volume on Logic. We find it exceedingly difficult to give an intelligible account of, and impossible even to attempt a criticism of, the particular views held by Lotze. We do not find in the Logic any psycho- logical discussion regarding the origin of our knowledge, nor
any description of the way in which mental activities develop in the individual. Lotze leaves to psychology to give any explana-
tion possible to it, of the way and manner of the derivation of its doctrines. Logic has its own place, which must be kept separate from the sphere of psychology. Equally resolute is Lotze against the claim of Hegel, that logic is metaphysic, and is valid not merely for the determination of thought and its pro- ducts, but valid also for the determination of reality. The pro- blem of pure thought, according to Lotze, is "to arrange the forms of thought in a progressive series according to the nature of its problems." Pure logic deals with thought in general, with those universal forms and principles of thought which hold good everywhere, both in judging of reality and in weighing possibility, irrespective of any difference in the objects. When we speak of concept, judgment, syllogism, we are speaking of forms which are different stages of one and the same activity. These are an ascending series, and each higher stage is called into existence and justified because the lower stage has failed to deal adequately with its own problem. Each higher number endeavours -to make good a defect of the preceding one, and seeks to find a wider principle whereby mere coincidence may become rational coherence. From single impressions given in sense, pure logic, according to Lotze, seeks to rise to the conception of the universal order by which it may comprehend the world. This, then, is the problem of pure logic as conceived by Lotze, and carried out in the first book. It is the systematic arrangement of the laws and forces by which we connect together the material supplied to us by our senses. The activity of thought proceeds in certain fixed ways to form our impressions into ideas. The first stage of this activity gives us the concept and the laws of its formation. But this first step inevitably leads us to the inquiry as to the subject and predicate, which must hang together universally. What are the forms which judgment must assume, when looked at merely in relation to thought itself ? What is the significance of the principle of identity ? of the principle of sufficient reason ? of the principle of disjunctive judgment ? We can only answer by saying that a lucid criticism of these principles are given, and that their logical value is appraised by Lotze, with great clearness and power. Passing on to the theory of inference and systematic forms of thought, we have a lucid descrip- tion of the syllogism. While every part of this discussion is full of value, to us the supreme value of Lotze's contribution to Formal Logic lies in the able and successful way in which he has been able to exhibit the ascending stages of the series as manifestations of one and the same activity of thought. _
Lots,'. System of Philosophy.—Logic n Three Books of Thought, if bressli- gation, and of Philosophy. By Hermann Lotze. English Translation edited by
Barnard Hosanquet, Fellaw of Univeraty College, Omfurd. Oxford : Clarendon Press.
Supposing, then, that we have obtained and are able to ex- hibit in an ascending series the laws and forms Oi our mental activity, what relation do the:le bear to the real world ? The forms of our thinking are to be applied to objects. So pure logic leads us on to applied logic, and thought passes over into investigation. Here we make the following quotation :—
"Let us, then, go no further than the natural presupposition which regards thought as a means to knowledge. Now, a tool must fulfil two conditious ; it must fit the thing, and it must fit the hand. It must fit the thing,—that is, it must be so constructed as to approach, reach, and get hold of the objects which it is to work upon, and find in them a point from which to operate ; this requirement is satisfied in the case of thought, if we admit that its forms and laws are no mere singularities of our mental organisation, but that, taken as they are, they show a constant and regular adaptation to reality. If, again, a tool is to fit the hand, it mud have such other structural properties as make it easy to grasp, hold, and move, having regard to the power, attitude, and position of the person who is to use it ; and in the case of thought this second indispensable requirement limits the scope of the previous admission. Only a mind which stood at the centre of the real world, not outside individual things, but penetrating them with its presence, could command such a view of reality as left nothing to look for, and was therefore the perfect image of it in its own being and activity. But the human mind, with which alone we are concerned, does not thus stand at the centre of things, but has a modest position somewhere in the extreme ramifications of reality. Compelled, as it is, to collect its knowledge piecemeal by experiences which relate immediately to only a small fragment of the whole, and thence to advance cautiously to the apprehension of what lies beyond its horizon, it has probably to make a number of circuits, which are immaterial to the truth it is seeking, but to itself in the search are indispensable. However much, then, we may pre- suppose an original reference of the forms of thought to that nature of things which is the goal of knowledge, we must be prepared to find in them many elements which do not directly reproduce the actual reality to the knowledge of which they are to lead us ; indeed, there is always the possibility that a very large part of our efforts of thought may only be like a scaffolding, which does not belong to the per- manent form of the building which it helped to raise, but, on the contrary, must be taken down again to obtain the full view of its result." (Logic, pp. 6-7.) Can we arrange the matter of our ideas under the forms of pure logic ? We do not find that the matter given us can easily
arrange itself into concepts, nor what predicate can belong universally to what subject, nor how we can discover the uni- versal law of a given material. These are matters which have to be investigated, and applied logic considers the hindrances which lie in the way, and the methods by which these may be overcome. Naturally, we begin by describing and defining what lies before us as a matter to be investigated. The object we have in view is to obtain a true conception. "The end of definition is the con- ception." But already we have in language a number of concep- tions, and these must form our starting-point. And here it will be well to read with care the caution of Lotze, and to remember that the distinction between object and object remain, even when we pass from one conception to another. We quote a passage on the Hegelian dialectic, in order to illustrate this remark :—
"Thus, we say that man is mortal, regarding death as something which above-ground lies merely in external circumstances ; and, according to this view, men would have two distinct properties,— that of living, and that of dying also. But, according to Hegel, the true way of regarding the matter is that life, as such, contains the germ of death ; and that, in a word, the finite in itself contradicts, and thereby does away with itself. Here we can detect, more readily than we can in some of the other passages in which Hegel treats of dialectic, a confusion between two different statements. It is to the conceptions by which we try to apprehend reality, that fixity and completeness are attributed in the first sentence ; it is not to the conceptions but the finite thing to which we apply them that it is said to pass over into its contrary ; and in this latter statement lies all the truth that the passage contains, which truth is shown by what follows to have been uttered uninten- tionally or even contrary to the intention of the author. For when the finite as such does away with itself, it does so not because the general conceptions which apply to it have lost their definiteness and swing round into their contraries, but because it, the thing to which those conceptions are applied, as finite or as actual, is unable permanently to fulfil what is reenired of it by these conceptions, though each of them is true of it at one moment ; through a defect in its nature it passes out of the province of one unchanged conception into the province of another which is equally unchanged. But the conceptions themselves do not alter their eternal meaning, because it is only for one moment, perhaps, that they are a correct measure of the changeable objects to which they are applied. The true view of the matter, then, cannot be that life, as such, beam in it the germ of death, and that the finite in general contradicts itself ; it is rather the two parts of this statement that contradict each other. Life, as such, does not die, and the general con,Tption of life obliges the living thing to live, not to die ; it is only the finite mentioned in the second part of the state- ment, i.e., only particular living bodies, that carry in them the germ of death." (Logic, pp. 202-3.) Lotze passes on to the discussion of the forms of proof, the
discovery of kinds of proof, fallacies and dilemmas, universal propositions derived from perceptions, the discoveries of laws, and other topics of the like order. On each of these heads he has something instructive and original to say ; instructive not only to the student, but to the man of affairs.
The third book," On Knowledge (Methodology)," is an inquiry into the sources of certainty. It is instructive to compare Lotze's treatment of this great subject with that of Cardinal Newman in his Grammar of Assent. We do not make the comparison now, we simply indicate that the comparison might be made, and would be found full of suggestiveness in many ways. Lotze points out that scepticism presup- poses truth and knowledge, then points out how the doubt whether our knowledge is truth may be overcome.
As to the question whether thought can be applied to the course of events, it is shown that this involves—(1), some given reality which thought cannot create ; (2), the universality of law in the real world, which is ultimately a matter of faith; and (3), synthetic judgments a priori, as basis of knowledge of particular laws. But here we must stop for the present. We are conscious of an imperfect presentation of the truth of Lotze's contribution to Logic. But we hope we have done enough to send students to the work itself ; and we close this notice with his own views :—
"I hold that much-reviled ideal of speculative intuition to be the supreme and not wholly unattainable goal of science, and I express the hope that German philosophy will always arouse itself afresh, with more of moderation and reserve, yet with no less enthusiasm, to the endeavour, not merely to calculate the course of the world, but to understand it."
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